Project maths plan does not add up

Sir, – The new project maths syllabus introduced for Junior and Leaving Cert has caused controversy among both teachers and students alike. Students who are intelligent and good at maths are finding project maths difficult as it is too “wordy”. I don’t understand why fifth years, who have studied the “old” maths course all their lives, have been landed with this whole new syllabus.

Why not start it from first year, and let it work its way up? With hardly any text books or past papers to go by, it must be almost impossible to teach. Instead of learning about different angles in class, teachers are spending full classes taking 20 or so students outside and making them physically measure the angle of the school wall to the ground.

It must be a nightmare for them, especially when classes aren’t co-operating.

I don’t understand why, in an economic crisis, we are spending so much money on something that has been abandoned in countries including Finland, one of the top 10 countries in Maths League Tables.

As a Transition Year student who will be studying the course next year, I truly hope project maths will not put me at a serious disadvantage at third level, when competing with students from UK and Northern Ireland. – Yours, etc,